5 Things You Should Know About Quantum Internet

Heartbleed and the recent Target breach have made consumers and
businesses alike painfully aware of just how precarious internet
security is today.

There is a constant battle being waged between those who want
access to our data and those whose job it is to protect it.

And this tug-of-war between encryption and decryption of
sensitive information is nothing new.

In fact, it is one of civilization’s oldest battles; the ancient
Egyptians and Mesopotamians struggled to secure communications
long before an alphabet was even invented.

We've come a long way since we started with simple substitution
ciphers. Today, sophisticated systems like AES and RSA dominate
the landscape. These protocols would require billions of years to
crack using today's ordinary PCs.

The problem is, we won’t be stuck with today’s computing power
forever. In fact, with the advent of a truly quantum computer (or
certain types of specially designed hardware), decryption could
soon take significantly less time and resources. With
organizations like NASA, Google and the NSA buying or building
quantum machines, classical crypto systems based on math are no
longer invincible -- far from it.

But the good news is that, with these accelerants in the market,
it won’t be long until the quantum internet, a type of network
that protects data as it travels from point to point using
quantum encryption, becomes a reality. But whether a quantum
internet will completely eliminate the possibility of data
interception according to the laws of physics is a topic of
debate.

Below I will demystify some misconceptions that have been
swirling around quantum encryption/decryption and the quantum
internet more generally, providing you with a realistic
understanding of what is and isn’t possible when it comes to data
security today and in the future.

1. Quantum encryption is science fiction

Some people believe that quantum encryption technologies like
quantum key distribution (QKD) are still just science fiction, in
the realm of lightsabers and time travel. But, while some people
hear the word "quantum" and turn a deaf ear, others are already
turning a profit.

Companies like MagiQ and ID Quantique identified the potential of
quantum cryptography back in the early 2000s and have since built
successful businesses around it. Clients of these futuristic --
but entirely real -- technologies already include major banks,
governments and militaries.

In short: It’s false. Quantum technology -- at least of the
cryptographic variety -- is very real today.

2. A good hacker can easily access some of your traffic

It's relatively simple for a hacker to break a physical cable,
like an ethernet cord or optical fiber, and extract data from it
using cheap tools that are readily available online.

In many cases, doing so will provide access to basic unencrypted
data such as certain website passwords, browsing history,
protected blog posts and more. It's more challenging to access
web-based email and payment information, which is usually
encrypted using RSA, but it’s still not impossible. RSA can
potentially be broken with specially-designed hardware -- or by a
math genius who happens to be really good at factoring.

In short: This is partially true. A good hacker can easily access
some of your traffic. A talented mathematician (or an NSA
engineer…) can access all of it.

3. It’s impossible to hack data transferred using quantum
encryption

The entire basis of quantum cryptography is the physical
principle that the state of a quantum object cannot be read
without changing its very nature. So any information transmitted
in the form of single photons over fiber channels will, in the
case of an attempted hack, self-destruct.

The intended recipient will then receive an unintelligible mess,
revealing the failed attack. Theoretically, this makes quantum
encryption unhackable.

Of course, as with anything, theory and reality are two different
things. The first quantum hacker, Vadim Makarov, described in a
lecture several approaches to cracking quantum cryptography
systems, one of which he successfully completed.

So then quantum encryption is hackable, right? Actually, not
quite. In each of Makarov's scenarios, the weakness wasn't in the
physics itself, but in the design of the actual equipment. In
other words, the real problem was human error. To ensure absolute
security, manufacturers must continue to perfect their hardware.

In short: It’s true. Quantum-encrypted information is impossible
to hack due to the laws of physics. The only potential weakness
comes from human-introduced design flaws.

4. The quantum internet will slow down data transfer

Transmitting information using quantum key distribution requires
setting up two separate data flows. The first data flow consists
of the encryption keys, the second of the actual message
contents. Think of it like a locked box and a key that unlocks
it. If the box is to be sent to someone securely, it must be
mailed separately from the key.

What this means in the real world is that, to ensure absolute
security, encryption keys must transmitted in a quantum state.

As many people have pointed out, quantum transmission can be
quite slow sometimes. However, using this “separate mailing”
technique (the aforementioned QKD), you won't slow down the
transfer of the message contents themselves. Reasonable
transmission speeds can also be ensured by the use of a single
key to decode many messages.

In short: The quantum internet should not slow down data
transfer; this idea is a common misconception.

5. It’s possible to cover the entire planet with a "quantum
internet"

Now that we know quantum encryption is secure, why don’t we build
a "quantum internet" and send everything that way? Quantum
cryptography has one serious drawback: everything works fine over
less than 100km distances, but the longer the link, the more
difficult it is to secure.

You cannot cover the entire planet with secure data centers,
because the more of them you have, the harder it is to be sure
they are all secure. There aren’t many solutions for this problem
yet, but this problem is being tackled from many angles.

So while the quantum internet is not yet strong enough to blanket
the planet, areas like Europe and Japan will soon build massive
quantum networks, and other nations will quickly follow suit.

In short: It’s not true yet, but someday in the near future it
will be.

As you can see, the quantum internet is likely to provide a
solution that will guarantee the security of messages for the
foreseeable future.

While we aren't 100 percent of the way there yet, many
organizations around the world are hard at work ensuring that we
will soon be able to send our messages and rest assured that they
are safe and sound according to the laws of physics.